The invention relates to an apparatus and method for filling tubular casings with pasty filling material, especially for the filling of synthetic sausage casings with sausage mass.
The overall appliance for filling tubular casings with pasty filling material includes an extruder which presses the filling material through a filling tube into the tubular casing. The casing to be filled is arranged in gathered form as a so-called concertina on the filling tube and is ungathered by the pressed-in filling material and drawn off from the filling tube. To fill the casing with the filling material tautly and in a crease-free manner, it is necessary to delay the draw-off of the casing from the filling tube by means of a brake. The brake is located in the vicinity of the filling-tube orifice and presses the ungathered tubular casing against the outer face of the filling tube with adjustable force.
It has been shown to be especially expedient if the gathered casing is located on a hollow-cylindrical core. This hollow-cylindrical core can, together with the gathered casing located on it, be pushed onto the filling tube and, after the casing has been removed completely, also easily removed. Conventionally, these casings gathered on a core have a so-called calibrating ring, over which the casing is drawn before the filling and which serves for expanding the casing to a constant diameter. See, for example, the following documents: U.S. Pat. No. 4,202,075; U.S. Pat. No. 4,292,711; DE-A-3,242,147; EP-A-0,105,446; EP-A-0,126,474; EP-A-0,133,573; GB-A-1,565,355; GB-A-2,100,571. The calibrating ring is either an integral component of the core or is attached to the core.
One disadvantage of these known appliances is that problems arise during the elimination of waste. The casings are gathered on the core directly from the manufacturer and the core together with the casing is put on the market. The customer (sausage manufacturer) pushes the composite core/concertina structure onto the filling tube of the filling machine and fills the casing which is ungathered continuously and is drawn off from the core. Finally, only the core still remains on the filling tube, and this is removed and replaced by another cartridge (composite core/concertina structure). The core, usually made of plastic, remains as waste.